“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I sit beside her on a bus stop bench that’s been spray-painted with so much graffiti, I can’t tell what color it is. A bank across the street has a big red thermometer on the side that reads 96 horrible degrees.

We sip our water and try to make it last. My bottle feels cold, so I press it against my forehead, hoping it will cool me off, but it doesn’t.

Just as we’re getting ready to leave, a beat-up red pickup slows down long enough for the driver to bang on his door and yell something gross at us.

Skylar scowls at the truck as it speeds away. “I hate guys like that.” She finishes her water and gets on her bike. “Let’s go before he comes back.”

I look at her, suddenly worried. “Do you think he will?”

“Maybe. He’s a perv, isn’t he? Yelling things like that at twelve-year-olds.”

My skin feels tight, itchy, like I’m getting heat rash or something. I don’t like this part of town. I don’t like this gas station with its old gas pumps and its garbage overflowing the dumpster. It stinks in the heat like somebody’s cooking rotten food. Most of all, I don’t like the guy in the pickup.

I take one last mouthful of water and swirl it around before I swallow it. “Let’s go home,” I say. “This place creeps me out.”

Skylar squeezes a few more drops of water out of her bottle and tosses it into the trash can. “We’re riding to the town limits,” she says. “You agreed.”

“Why? There won’t be anything to see.”

“How do you know? We’ve never seen the exact end of Evansburg.” Skylar looks annoyed. Heat does that to her.

“Suppose our mothers find out?”

“How will they know?” Skylar asks. “Mom never cares where I am, as long as I’m home for dinner, and your mom’s at work. We’ll be back before she comes home.”

“She’ll find out. She always does. I can’t get away with anything, and you know it.”

“Oh, Abbi, that’s because you always tell the truth.” Skylar makes it sound like a character defect.

“She isn’t as easy to fool as your mom.”

“You just need to fib sometimes, that’s all.” Skylar straddles her bike and waits for me to get on mine. She pushes off, and I follow. I’m a little anxious, mostly about getting into trouble with Mom, but I follow Skylar to the top of another hill.